Ethan Shaftel

Ethan Shaftel

Ethan’s work bridges cinema, interactive design, and immersive media. In VR, his short satire EXTRAVAGANZA was premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.

He directed a room-scale VR experience for Red Bull based on STREET FIGHTER 2, and played a key role on THE WALKING DEAD VR, directing 2nd Unit and leading the 360 editorial team.

Before VR, he created dozens of immersive media projects including a room-sized video installation for Nike, animated parade floats for Disneyland Tokyo, and screen content for artists such as Rihanna, Beyonce, Jay Z, Tiesto and more.

Ethan’s work as a director and writer in traditional film includes SUSPENSION, a science fiction feature distributed by Warner Bros, plus award-winning shorts and music videos including Vimeo Staff Pick and festival favorite FLESH COMPUTER. In the interactive realm, he developed games for Hasbro and Fox as the founding creative director of a successful LA-based game startup. More at EthanShaftel.com

The Talk

Zangief and the Puppet: Two Case Studies in VR Storytelling

Ethan will walk us through the design and production of two of his VR projects released in the last 6 months — one an original 360° movie and the other a room-scale VR game created for Red Bull — to illustrate storytelling and experiential design concepts and challenges at the heart of immersive media.